Wandering around Borders with my Rewards Card in hand, I desperately tried not to go into the cookbook section. Much too tempting, and I my mission today was solely intended for the pick up of a little known, out of print cookbook that piqued my interest on a Border's website search. Looking into Vegan baking seems to always leave something to be desired, yet I stumbled upon a book that rang true to my heart. "Hell yeah and Damn Right/The Dirty South." Yes, the title was a bit absurd, but for $7, I couldn't go wrong. The order was placed and, now, 4 weeks later I was searching the store for anyone with a hanging name tag to help to retrieve my Hell Yeah book.

I justified my time spent waiting by looking only at "sale" cookbooks. Typical "100 cookie recipes," "Stir Fry," and "Pasta" books that were published by mass companies, not foodies and chefs, and certainly without the Good Housekeeping triple tested seal of approval. I watched two young Asian girls flip study "Asian Cooking," and "Stir Fry," and wondered if this country was their culture now, leaving them eager to cook the way of their elders.

I had always thought I didn't have a true southern upbringing…with the smothered this, and fried that…as I recall little more than Hamburger Helper, Pop tarts, and a love affair with Tony the Tiger. I wished I could tell of a grandmother stirring beans, making corn pones and lecturing me in the finer points of ham hocks and fat back. I didn't specifically recall Sunday suppers of fried chicken and my mother's biscuits. Our biscuits came from a starchy little doughboy, but the label did say "Grands." Was that enough to consider it my food heritage? I have spent much of my food studies figuring out all that is southern cooking in vain attempts to recreate the way older southern people were brought up, or think myself above this all, and stick to gourmet, French country, or some cuisine with a foreign pronunciation I still will not try to say in the company of real chefs.

As I scanned titles and told myself, "no more cookbooks, Claire," a little book I had flipped through many times sat on the lowest shelf, turned sideways, the cover hidden. The Treasury of White Trash Cooking. I recall finding my last name in the recipes once, and decided for a mere eight dollars, I too could at least have this in my collection. I didn't even really intend on reading it. Anniversary Bon Appetites, constant baking chemistry studies, and, some real studying for school were to be my current priorities. The book sat on my ottoman glaring at me humbly for days. I would carry it to my table to read, and disregard it. It walked around with me as I made tea, watched me as checked emails in the mornings, and seemed to call to me as I was making sweet potatoes. I was interested now, very interested in fact, and on a whim over a bowl of farm picked berries and intense fiber cereal one morning I cracked the book open.

Immediately, I was hit with colloquially written scripts of funerals, birthins', and recipes with people's names in the titles. I subconsciously was smiling with each page turn. I flipped through the glossy pictures, half out of wanting to get to the next chapter on "Mind Your Meat," and half out of wondering if I knew the places, or if my family might be there, sitting at the county fair pig show, or standing around the cast iron pans. I laughed out loud. The way people describe their own recipes was how I have heard of everything I had every eaten… "I call this Suki Wahka Suki, because when Susan had this, she just kept screamin' that over and over." To my surprise, everything seemed so familiar. Recipes I thought were my mother or family throwing random things together in lei of "real southern" cooking, were there, almost identical to how I had eaten them. Yes, my grandmother's cornbread stuffing in all its "2 boxes cornbread mix" glory. Casseroles that were my holiday traditions. Concoctions too off for me to ever consider legitimate became real, printed in the pages, and more boldly imprinted in my memories.

I'm still working my way through the book, and have made it my goal to accept the beauty that is MY southern cooking. No longer will I gasp at Pudding Mixes and Cream of Mushroom soup. Many chefs want to elevate southern cooking. I was one of them, longing to make sweet reductions to serve over creamy grits, made with the fine cheeses and plopped on plates, perfectly garnished, defying all I had known. But there ain't nothing wrong with best childhood friend's mother's grits made with a log of garlic cheese and "mixed real good with a big spoon." My south is humble, never making leaps and bounds to be the top, but has somehow always risen there. The best food always came from friends and family, was unpretentious, and made of moderate ingredients.

"White Trash" may not sound so lovely. In fact, it sounds down right gross. I am still wondering how my family's recipe ended up there, but have no shame in tracking down this other cook in the family. What started out as merely wanting a coffee table or back shelf book, turned into a renewal of self, family, and home. Cue the heart touching music, and let the pictures of fields start now. May even make unbelievers want to embrace the chittlens and congealed salads of a seemingly bygone era. White trash food is still alive, yet not screaming aloud for all to hear. It rests in my neighbors, and family who see the food as reality. The rest of the world can keep calling it "trash," and leaving "chittlens" out of spell check on Microsoft Word.

"One man's trash is another man's treasure."

I'm proud to say that White Trash Cookery is now my own treasure, and will never fail to be my go-to book for when I need to fall back to how it all began… with canned biscuits and garlic flavored cheese logs.